It was no great surprise the power was out on the boat; the surprise was it was still afloat. Electrical cables had been pulled from their fittings. Neon strip lights had been tugged from the ceiling to hang below head height. A vast boiler had been overturned, holed as if torn open, and even the hull itself had been holed, near the water line at the far end of the huge, almost cavernous area. Water lay, a foot deep, all across the floor of the chamber and dim sunlight could be seen through torn and ripped metal, which looked to have been rent asunder in strips, as if it was little more than paper.
Hynd came to Banks’ side. He whistled in amazement at the view.
“What did this, Cap? Iceberg?” he said.
“Aye, maybe, or maybe a big brother of one of those wee beasties?” Banks replied. “And if there is a big bugger around, I’m hoping he stays well away. The sooner we get off this boat, the happier I’ll be.”
“Do you think Nolan will make it?” Hynd asked. It was the first time any of them had spoken of it; it went against the grain to leave a man but they all knew the drill well enough: the mission came first. That was the first, the only law, they really had to adhere to, no matter how many corners they had to cut. But losing a man always hurt and Banks knew Nolan was lost; he’d seen it in the man’s face, smelled it in the rot in his body. Hynd had seen it too; he wasn’t really expecting an answer to his question and was talking to hear something, anything, in the deadly silence lying across the whole engine room. And again, Banks knew how the sarge felt; they’d been in empty places before – abandoned power stations, factories, and even whole towns. But they’d always felt dead and lifeless and none of those places had ever felt quite so alive, quite so threatening as this. He felt like a mouse circling a mousetrap, knowing there was something he needed, knowing there’d be dire consequences of taking it but needing to take it anyway.
And I know Hynd well enough to know he feels the same.
He turned to the other man and clapped him on the upper arm.
“Half an hour more, that’s all. We get the power on to the computers, I get the gen, call it in, and we’re offski, back into the kayaks and across to the pickup point.”
Hynd didn’t get a chance to reply. A loud splash sounded at the far end of the engine room, over near the tear in the hull. Both men turned to look as waves ran across the flooded floor but there was no other sign of movement.
Banks stepped back to where McCally and Briggs continued work on the electrical panel.
“Any joy, lads?”
“Maybe,” Briggs replied. “Give us five minutes, Cap.”
Another splash sounded somewhere out in the engine room; this one closer. More waves washed across the flooded room again but Banks still got no sight of anything else moving.
“Want Mac and I to take a closer look in there, Cap?” Hynd said.
Banks shook his head and stepped back to where the gallery walkway met the main corridor, a spot where he could see the whole length of the engine room and retreat quickly if he had to.
“Nope. Nobody’s going to be doing anything stupid here; no wandering about in dark rooms, no splitting up – and definitely no shouting to see if anybody’s there. If there’s more of these beasties about, we leave them alone if they leave us alone. Agreed?”
Hynd nodded.
“Agreed.”
“Nearly there, anyway, Cap,” Briggs said. “Piece of piss.”
A louder splash echoed through the engine room. Banks stepped back toward the gallery walkway and looked for the source of the sound. He didn’t have to look far. One of the beasts stood between him and the rent in the hull.
This one was bigger – a lot bigger. As big as a family car.
At first, only the hard shell of its back showed above water. The dark oval suddenly scurried forward, sending more waves of water rippling through the flooded room. Then it came out of the water. It clambered up the inside of the hull opposite, so huge its head was nearly at Banks’ level up on the gallery walkway before the rest of it was out of the water. He finally got a good, long look at it as it kept scurrying higher. The armored shell made it as well protected as any tank. Each leg looked longer than a man was tall and was tipped with talon-like hooks the length of Banks’ hand and twice as thick. Two long antennae rose from the head, five, six feet long, each an inch and more thick and as rigid as any iron cable. They tasted and felt around the structure of the hull, as if deciding which part to eat. A wavering, faint blue luminescence hung all along its underbelly and he guessed it was ten feet, maybe twelve, from head to stubby tail.
He struggled with an almost overwhelming urge to lift his weapon and pour rounds into the thing but his own order echoed back at him in his head.
“We leave them alone if they leave us alone. Agreed?”
Agreed, he whispered and stepped back to the edge of the gallery. He saw Hynd look over his shoulder and reach instinctively for his weapon. He put a hand on the man’s arm and shook his head but didn’t speak, merely ushered Hynd and Mac backward until they were all at the door of the small room where the other two worked the panel.
“What the fuck, Cap?” Mac said, an exaggerated whisper that Banks put a stop to with a finger at his lips. Fortunately, everyone got the message. They stood still, barely breathing, as the thing splashed around in the engine room mere yards away from them. Banks was trying not to think – what if it could smell, or somehow, some other how sense their presence. What if it was even now squirting its poison in the air, what if they were all breathing it, what if…?
He forced himself to calm and motioned to McCally they should keep working on the electrical panel.
It’s just a bug. A big bug, granted. But it’s still just a bug.
He tried to believe it but hadn’t quite got there yet.
Finally, Briggs gave him the thumbs up and he saw two small red LEDs winking on the control panel. He jerked his thump upward in reply.
Head on up.
He took the lead this time and left the engine room and up the stairs to head into the corridor beyond. He almost walked straight into a very surprised-looking woman holding a gun.
He didn’t know which one of them was the more shocked but he had training, she did not, and he took the gun off her before she so much as twitched. He saw she was about to speak and maybe even yell so he did the only thing he could think of. He passed the spare weapon backward; someone took it from him but he didn’t turn to see who, covered her mouth to silence her, and dragged her along the corridor, bundling her into the first room they came to, what looked like an engineer’s cabin and bunk. His squad came in at his back and Hynd watched the door.
“This is Nolan’s weapon,” Mac said at his side. “How did you get it?”
The woman looked pale and wide-eyed but to her credit had quickly recovered her composure.
“He gave it to me,” she said, her accent obvious. She avoided Mac, looking Banks in the eye. “He told me to come looking for you.”
“Where is he?” Mac said, almost shouting until Banks put up a hand to stop him.
“He’s right where you left him. Dying then, dead now,” she said softly. “I was with him at the end.”
Mac fell quiet and Banks saw the truth of it in the woman’s eyes: Nolan hadn’t gone easy.
And we left him to die alone.
He’d have to deal with it later, in the long-dead hours on dark nights. But for now, he had no time for guilt.